My thoughts are with your friend and yourself.
To be honest I wasn't going to post on this thread, reason being I lost a very dear friend in a bike accident at the start of april and putting the past weeks into words doesn't sit well with me, that said, I feel the following might be a reality check for one of us? - where to start?
There's a lot of talk of speed and sportsbikes etc here and while I agree with the majority - I think what I've come to learn in the past month or so is even more sobering. My friends accicent happened in a 30. He wasn't speeding. he took a corner that is but 2 mins from my parents house ( the house I grew up in and on a corner I've been around a thousand plus times since I was 16). Simply put - something happened and he didn't make the corner - the police can't say what, but he was riding within his limits and those of the road, he hit the kerb and inturn he hit road furniture. His injuries were internal, in short his own bones shattered and destroyed all his internal organs - he carried a donar card - there was nothing the hospital coulld salvage. I have his bike, as the family have asked me to deal with it, and if you didn't know the horror of what had happened you'd think the bike had lowsided at 10mph, even the mirrors and indicators are intact.
I've walked the accident site, seen the chalk marks and the scrapes left by the few bits of metal that touched down and it all makes no sense. So... the reason I'm posting: let's not forget we are all very fragile creatures - it doesn't take an almighty smash to kill us - it can just go very bad - very quickly where and when we least expect it. He didn't ride a sportsbike and while he was spirited, he was a father of two and knew it. I honesty can't explain how I feel right now, I was honoured to be Pall Bearer at his funeral, but by the grace of god I never want to experience that again. I flip flop daily between giving up riding and not. If my wife said "stop" tomorrow I would... I love bikes, but they aren't worth dying over.
An accidents an accident - I know this. So if it doesn't happen on a bike it can happen crossing the road, do I/we stop doing he things we love because they might hurt us..?. Rupert Paul wrote in last months Bike that he'd been to 4 funerals in the past year - and all they had done is strenghthen his resolve to ride and enjoy life. I'm on the fence and will be for a while yet I'm sure. Just for christ sakes think about everything you do when your on the road - I'm not preaching here, I just think we should be under no illusions, we are fragile units no matter how much hardware we cloak ourselves in. Don't let your guard down just because your doing 20mph down the high st instead of 120mph down the motorway - nothing's turns out like you expect it. If you trip and fall while walking it hurts like a bugger, so hit the same pavement at 20mph you can only imagine.
God bless and be safe.
No matter how safe you ride, accidents can still happen as you may not have any time to react if someone else fails to keep a bend.
). 
